Rinne test

physicians typically use tuning forks of either 256 or 512 Hz (i.e., low frequencies of human hearing), which means that they are testing the stiffness component of the middle ear's acoustic impedance, which is determined by the volume of the middle ear space

when person can no longer hear the sound (bone conduction threshold), place the tuning fork near the ear canal

ask when the person can no longer hear the sound (air conduction threshold)

this is usually stated as air conduction is better than bone conduction (AC > BC)

in a person with a conductive hearing loss, bone conduction is greater than air conduction (BC > AC; bone threshold is less than air threshold)

in a patient with a profound, unilateral sensorineural hearing loss, there may be a false negative Rinne due to the response of the normal ear i.e., AC>BC in the affected ear, but both of these thresholds are elevated relative to BC in the normal ear, so the patient reports that bone conduction is louder (they're actually hearing the tone in their normal ear, rather than their tested --- i.e., affected --- ear)